New England has some very old graveyards. Compared to Europe they are brand new, but by North American standards they are ancient.
Look at the birth and death dates and you’ll notice a awful lot of children compared to new graveyards. While life in general was harder, it’s disease that really took its toll on kids.
There are a lot of negatives to the modern world, but a much lower childhood mortality rate is a solid plus. Most of that is due to vaccines and medicines. That’s just a fact. Before you go throwing out all modern medical practices spend some time in an old graveyard. Reflect on all those short lives.
Of course, we’ve reached the point where medicines have more serious side effects than the problem they solve. Just listen to the side effects of drugs advertised on TV. Your problem might be ugly toenails, but the “cure”could destroy your liver. It seems there are more than a few of those drugs out there. One could be forgiven for not trusting all drugs and medicines.
Health care definitely falls into the old 80/20 rule. You get eighty percent of the benefit from twenty percent of the effort. There are a lot of low hanging fruit when it comes to health care. There are easy and cheap things that take care of most health issues. For example, money spent improving nutrition and education could save billions trying to fix problems caused by bad habits.
Another thing you’ll notice about old graveyards. There are quite a few people who lived to advanced old age. If they survived the diseases of childhood their active lifestyles and unprocessed foods did wonders.
There’s a lot that can be learned form the past.
-Sixbears
A vast part of healthcare involves treating self inflicted problems. And the most effective treatment for those problems has always been prevention. If people ate right, exercised and engaged in some self control many would not need to see a doctor for anything other than trauma till they became quite old. Smoking, alcohol, crappy food and the modern sedentary lifestyle are responsible for probably 80% of the problems I see presenting in ER and on the hospital floor.
ReplyDeleteDan your party true in Modern age.
ReplyDeleteIf you spent much time researching how and what people ate to live back in the revolutionary war period, you'd be amazed at how tough they were.
Had to be otherwise their failure to thrive means WE are not here.
But then again folks with now in modern age "Treatable" diseases survive and have families. Diabetes for example in the era of the French Revolution (American Revolution era) was a deadly disease and you most likely never made it to adult hood.
The village idiot was likely to be the useful sweep the streets person or simply froze-starved long before adulthood.
Modern medicine and social safety nets allow many that would never make it past childhood to live full lives.
So, not everything is due to someone making poor choices.
Grave Yards are full of once healthy people. Many of them were up and dancing one day, and in the box the next. The average age of leaving life is rising every couple years. Soon it will be over 100 and the price of health care will be higher than ever. Eventually we'll learn. Until then we will all feel the pains of loss and the tears will clear when the sun rises. Peace and Balance, John
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